Tell that to Reverend James Reeb, a white protestor of segregation who was beaten to death in Selma. But really, they are making an extremely shady argument because the biggest protestors of various socially reactionary policies are uniformly going to be people targeted by those policies, so MLK or Harvey Milk or someone “don’t count” as assassinations based on political views because they were themselves minorities and it is “merely” a hate crime.